Stephenson: Cell phone use still endangering our loved ones
Remember when you could drive to the grocery store, into the mountains or down the interstate and know that for that moment, no matter how brief, the time was yours alone. You couldn't be reached by your boss or your spouse or your kid asking for one more errand, one more hour, one more piece of you.
Then we got cell phones.
Remember when you got into your car, turned the key, eased your foot off the brakes and knew, really knew, at least for that moment, that the car was the most important piece of technology in your life and deserved your total attention?
That was before we all got cell phones, before cell phones became smart phones, before phone calls became text messages.
Remember when Fort Collins wasn't the face of the debate about cell phone use in vehicles because a little girl riding her bike hadn't yet been struck by the car of a woman on her way home from work who momentarily took her eyes off the road to deal with her phone?
That was Nov. 25, 2008.
Erica Forney's mother, Shelley Forney, reminded us this week how much our complacency can cost us.
Five years after her child's death, Forney says the pain is still palpable and the need for legislation preventing cell phone use while operating vehicles is still real.
"She had a life ripped and taken from her," Forney told CBS4 Denver last week. "That could be anybody out there … that could be you tomorrow, that could be your child who was there that morning and gone that afternoon."
In the months after 9-year-old Erica's death, the Colorado Legislature considered measures that would have restricted drivers to hands-free devices, but they chose instead to pass a watered-down version. Since 2009, Colorado drivers are prohibited from texting behind the wheel, but only teens are banned from phone use.
This week, Rep. Jovan Melton, D-Aurora, reignited the debate by proposing legislation to limit use to hands-free devices or emergency calls and to prohibit drivers from using phone apps.
Here are the statistics we ignore when we take our hands off the wheel to answer our phone: According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than nine people are killed and 1,060 more are injured each day in the United States in crashes that involve a distracted driver. In 2011, 3,331 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver and 387,000 were injured. "Distraction" was reported as a factor in 18 percent, nearly one in five, injury accidents, and 69 percent of U.S. drivers ages 18-64 said they had talked on their cell phone while driving within the previous 30 days.
And guess how many text messages fly through cyberspace, presumably some of them received or sent by drivers on Colorado roads in spite of the ban: More than 196 billion in June 2011, according to the CDC.
Like 203 million other Americans, I have a cell phone. I love the camera and the world clock; I think it's fun to get sports scores and the temperature from "Siri"; I check my email on it sometimes when I'm killing time at a coffee shop and text people when I don't want to indulge in a conversation. I understand why others do, but I don't use my phone in the car.
Too many children who have left us too soon have convinced me the price is too high.
Forney would like to see an outright ban. She wants to keep other parents from feeling the pain she deals with every day. She wants to honor her daughter's memory with a law that has some teeth. But Melton is taking a politician's tact, pursuing small steps that he thinks can be accomplished.
"I think the legislation before was ahead of its time," Melton said, "and I think we've now caught up to having this conversation and actually passing something that's going to make our streets a little more safer."
Twelve states and Washington, D.C., have already ban hand-held devices while driving.
That's the least we can do; but when you remember what we stand to lose, you know it's not enough.
Erin Stephenson is a publishing editor at The Coloradoan. Contact her at ErinStephenson@coloradoan.com.